Fe Fi Fo None – Canucks Shutout Kings

I’m just going to get it out of the way; the officiating did not decide the game tonight, but holy shit was it awful. Next time the Kings play with this nitwit young referee whose name I don’t want to give the credit of looking up and committing to memory, I’d like Kyle Clifford to take a shit on the opposing goalie’s head, to show him what unsportsmanlike conduct really looks like. I’d like Penner to put that same goalie in a headlock and give him noogies so that he may learn the true meaning of goalie interference. I’d like to see him make those kind of calls against Vancouver in British Columbia so that he will reap the consequences of his lameness in the form of grapefruit-sized balls of ice raining down upon his head, released from the quick-to-violence fan base who likes to blame refs more than any other. The same fan base who I am guessing will look at tonight’s officiating and wonder ‘what’s the big deal King fans?’

The Kings played a very solid game. Quick… Well I maintain that Lucic goal on Saturday wasn’t really soft, but that Malhotra goal? My satin pillow case is coarser. Still, scoring goals is somewhat of a necessity in hockey, whether your goalie gives up a soft one or not. This is the second game in a row I’ve seen the Kings play fiercely in front of the opposing net, crashing for rebounds with reckless abandon. Problem is in both instances it only happened in the last minute of the game.

We can skate with the best of the best. We proved that on Thursday. We proved it on Saturday. We proved it tonight. But can we ever get out of this defunct pacifism when it comes to challenging the slot? It’s slipped into memory but a handful of times this season. Each occurrence of its amnesia results in above average goal output. It’s knowledge, be it subconscious or Komponned, relegates the talents of our players to a level of usefulness that would make Alexander Burrows teaching an etiquette class seem like a bright idea.

Dallas lost. San Jose won. We drop to 9th. With a game in hand on Phoenix and one less left than the Sharks, our leeway for letting points slip away is nil. This game occurs 3 months ago and it’s not a big deal. Quick will rebound, I’d say. The puck will eventually go in, I’d fancy. Luongo was strong, I’d allow.

It’s not January. There are 6 games left and the only thing that is good enough is victory. When you hold your fate in your hands, best not to wipe your ass. We played well. Don’t care. Quick let in a bad goal. Unacceptable. What the other team does on the ice does not matter. What the rest of the Pacific does is irrelevant. Singular optics and honed intensity.

22 replies

I told you I was most worried about the Calgary game. I thought we would take this one. The boys look beat up, like a fighter who doesn’t want to go inside for fear of getting knocked out, keeping the opponent away, throwing soft jabs but unwilling to get in the fight. Get in the fight. Get in the fight. It’s round 10, get in the fucking fight.

Somebody replaced their sticks with wet noodles and they didn’t figure it out until late in the 3rd. Fundamental passing, and all that other stuff other than checking, was ignored completely. I can take a loss where you play well and don’t quite get there, but this game they were giving the puck away like it was infected.
Voynov struggled, and nobody anywhere has been talking about the change pairing Voynov and Mitchell now with Kopi’s line, while Doughty and Scuderi have been put out there with Richards and Carter. 3 games and counting, I think, but at least two, and is it any concidence that where goes Scuderi also goes the arid desert of scoring chances?
In the Flames game, Giordiano needs to at least kiss the glass with his molars, if not narrowly miss being guilloitined when his head sticks right thru the glass. Iginla needs a fight with Clifford. Brown needs to knock our own Justin Williams down once or twice to get him to slow the fuck down, Williams is racing the play and not letting things develop.
Shit game tonight; I was hoping for an OT point, not much more, but I EXPECTED a sold effort. We need to rule the pace of games, and we never did except the one Fraser shift that somehow resulted in a goal. It was a soft goal, but we can’t expect to go into OT tied zero-zero every game against good opponents like we did against St. Louis. We are probably going to need a goal or two of our own here and there, I think it’s goddamn mandatory.

I don’t care what hockey game I watch, as to any team, I totally dispise a game where the only goal comes in the first couple of minutes and then zip for both teams after that. That really sucks. I had a sneaky gut feeling as the game progressed that I would again be watching game situation that I dispise.

This was a game where the Cansucks did not make any really bad mistakes and allow for some easy Kings goal.

The Kings worked hard (not hard enough) and did not get the bounces. But, they could have worked harder and pressed more, yet, something was just not clicking tonight.

There were some missed passes and failed passes to open people, with lost chances in the process. Loungo was beatable and it just did not happen, not really to his credit but just the Kings did not get the job done.

It is hard to fault that early Quick goal. It was bang, bang, and the shot narrowly slipped in. A goalie can give up one of those per game, and that is all he did here tonight. It is just another game that Quick did not get the offensive support.

It is worrisome about the offense now sputtering, with 3 games and 2 goals.

Now, it is do or die situation here, where there is really no more room for error or failure.

I really hope that the team does not get down and plan for golf. They can still do this and they were close tonight, but just missed by inches here and there.

Tomorrow night Kings have the toughest game. A Calgary team whose Playoff lives depend on a result… on the road. Meanwhile Dallas has Edm and SJ has the Ducks, and I wouldn’t expect a repeat of that result from last week. Kings a point behind Dallas who has way more ROW’s. Game in hand on Phnx but a point behind. Anyone know the tiebreaker between those two?

FLASHPOINTS: For me there were a few flashpoints from last nights game. I know that many find reasons to dis the announcers be it in game announcers or JR. But between the two they pointed out some big keys for me.

1) The game announcers mentioned that late in the 2nd period, Richards was on his third game w/o a shot on goal. Three games!!? I don’t think thats why DL made the trade for him.
These are games where they desperately need any sort of points…. and the results in spite of the win vs. St. L are two shutouts and two goals vs. Boston though one of the two came very late. It’s not a pretty indication imo.

2) JR (hate him…. which many seem to… or not), I found it very illuminating that he gave examples in between periods of the Canucks attack. How sharp there passing is and how they use it to create ‘angles’ from which they create the speed and precision of their attack.
I saw the examples and while I’ve always noticed what he was talking about, I couldn’t have broken it down that way.

What I take from Example No. 2: Just my opinion but I find the Kings are in rather desperate need of another top two forwards who have Trevor Lewis like speed, but with far better instincts and hands in the offensive zone.
Just to be clear…. I don’t think they need those elements when they play many of the middle of the pack teams, but against Detroit, Vancouver, Pittsburgh, Boston, NYR, and certain others I think it would make a big difference…
In Summary: more speed and skill. It’s better…. but not sure it’s better enough to compete at the elite level yet (on a consistent basis).

Well, if your looking for a comparison between Vancouver and L.A. in their attack, last night would not be the best example. The Kings were kept outside, but mostly by their own doing. They were terrible with basic stick-handling, and as a result they looked inept in the O-zone, especially for the first thirty minutes. That Power Play at the end of the first was the most pure example of the Kings being unable to manage the puck in any zone.

Voynov has been put out there with the Kopi line over the last few games, and at the same time the team has struggled offensively. He really struggled all game last night, it was an off game as he was poor at passing, got bottled up and was many times unable to evade one fore-checker, and he gave the puck away a lot.

The goal scoring has dropped since the change with Voynov, and it seems obvious to be one causing the other, but I am not convinced. The attack was sound against Boston, the St. Louis game was two excellent defensive teams in synch playing a defensive chess-match, but the Vancouver game was just awful. I am not ready to blame the transition with Voynov for having hurt the team offensively, yet.

With all that being said, Vancouver is definitely a more creative team. Like Detroit, they have three lines that mix speed and possession well, thwarting counter-attacks by simply dominating possession.

They both pinch very tightly at the opposing blue lines, as opposed to the Kings who retreat their defensemen much more easily. By disrupting our breakout, they disrupt our flow, we make stupid give-aways, and make them look good by creating counter-attacks for them and then retreating.

Then, we are willing to let them in our zone but deflect them to the outside, we play a “contain” defense, not totally passive but we want a boards battle so we try to get the play to go there.

Vancouver, Detroit, etc. are very good at penetrating to the faceoff circles and then making a quick drop pass, then the second guy makes an immediate cross-ice pass to the weak side trailing defenseman. When we then shift our guys to cover the weak side, lanes open up for passes thru the middle. They can do this because all of their defensemen are willing, or allowed, to commit to the offensive attack. I feel like our guys are always 3 on 5, or at best sometimes 4 on 5.

By creating depth on attack and penetrating to the decision point for D-men (the top of the circle) and then dishing it for a very short pass to setup a cross-ice pass, they open up our structure.

They also exploit our “zone” defense by flooding 4 guys on attack to one side of the ice, then again sending the pass out to the opposite point. It’s what they did on the power play, setting up the weak side guy, but they do it at even strength, too. They draw us onto one side fo the ice, then pass it across. When we scramble to adjust to the other side of the ice, lanes open up.

It’s what I have been wishing the Kings would do: our 5th guy, the D-man away from the play, floats mid-ice at the blue line. He is neither far enough away to be dangerous, or close enough to be helpful. Instead, he is in defensive position in case we lose the puck. I want him to be within one stride of his own wall, at the point, ready for passes or to pinch on a ring-around.

SUTTER: “It’s the same as the playoffs. You can say you got so many chances, but you’ve got to bear down. You can say they scored a bad goal, but at the same time, it was a hard game for us. We were coming off those two really physical games, and you could see there wasn’t a lot of energy in our game, but we were doing everything right. We were just trying to dig down in there. A tough one.’’

I guess when he says “…a hard game for us” and “It was a tough one” he means the Kings underperformed. At least I hope that’s what he thinks and he is sugarcoating it a little.

If that was indeed the “same as the playoffs” it’s not a good sign that the team backed off the physicality after just two games. They were outstanding physically in the games against St. Louis and Boston, lots of hits both ways. But knowing Vancouver is very effective physically, and also that without one of the Vagina Monologues’ co-writers the Canucks would likely be playing a tighter defensive game, the Kings seemed to back off the hitting and as a result, I felt, they got run outta the building as far as hits go.

Maybe this explains the inability to hold, move, pass and receive the puck through the first 30 minutes of the game; were they “hearing footsteps?”

@X…..
Would you mind taking a brief look at my comments just above yours wrt what the commentators said. I’d love to get your take on that. Do you find the comments accurate?
Because anytime I watch Vancouver regardless of who they play against, they seem to be flying and creating, creating, creating on the attack.
Just seems like the Kings are up against it when they play teams with a lot of speed in spite of the fact that we beat Chicago three times this year, although each of those games they were missing either Kane or Toews.

Losing 2 in a row in regulation right now is unacceptable…I’ve already pushed the 6-game winning streak from my mind as they MUST finish strong and not taper off. Frustrating.

While I mostly agree that the refs didn’t cost us the game, I think calling that penalty on Penner with 3 1/2 minutes left in a tight game was horrendous. That took 2 minutes from our end game attack and who knows what could’ve happened w/ those extra 2 minutes. The league has to get a fucking grip on this goaltender bullshit. If you LOOK at a goalie the wrong way, it’s a penalty. What the FUCK was Clifford supposed to do there? Run over the goaltender? No…he stopped so he wouldn’t crush Luongo…and still gets called. I HATE the Ducks…HATE them…but they had a goal taken away from them the other night because the ref thought Cogliano grazed Turco when the shot was taken. He didn’t even touch him…horrendous call. Game changing. These refs need to get a fucking grip and open their god damn eyes. Goalies are treated like some endangered species out there. If a player gets pushed into a goalie, that player is called for a penalty…what else can he fucking do?

We’ll see this horrible calls around the NHL in the playoffs and it will eventually cost a team a game…which is unacceptable.

After mulling over the goose egg in riot city, any loss is bad obviously at this time of year, but, after 60 minutes and not getting a goal is really hard to swallow. It is so hard to swallow because these guys on paper still should be getting some goals each night. Even crappy teams get some goals.
I noticed that Kopi was playing more perimeter and blue line at times, and I don’t know how or why that happened, especially when I could not see Brown or Williams even positioned for anything good to happen. Of everybody on the ice last night, I have a tendency to look at Brown to see his position and what is going on to see if he is in synch with Kopi and Williams.
To me, it seemed that Brown was off into this own world and match ups and position that was not adjusting to what his line mates were trying to do. I just did not see them working as an entire unit and in synch. That is worrisome when the top line appears to be out of synch and position and alignment.
So for the next game, from my angle, they need to bear down and figure out getting the top two lines clicking and aligned in synch to take great shots and find rebounds to stuff into the net.

Interesting your breakdown on that. To me it just didn’t ‘feel like’ they were gonna score once it got half way thru the 2nd period. And if you watched the tsn feed, the announcers even called out Richards and Carter at that moment. (Carter had one shot, Richards none at that point). He said if thats the way it goes, no way do the Kings win this game. That they needed more from them. I didn’t see most of the 3rd period, but earlier on it just looked pretty grim.

Also the NBCSC guys said how well Luongo was playing. They showed highlights to back it up. And I thought, ‘crikey, most AHL goalies would’ve made those saves no problem’.

Because it was a loss, many different people can look at that game and see the deficiency that happened in many different ways.
I mean, if you have defense glasses on, you can see that the Kings did a good job on preventing a lot more goals.
But with the offense glasses on, just go down the line and see each big gun did not get the job done. Kopi seemed the most animated and aggressive in rushes and efforts to find a pass to somebody, but no body was home.
That first anemic power play opportunity was a bad omen.
There seemed to be times that it looked like maybe the Kings were almost going to break through, but, then something fumbled up or a good D play intervened to break it up.
I really don’t care what the so-called mainstream media experts say, Looneylongo, was average in nets and was most definitely ripe to let in goals.
The best I can say today is that the Kings can for sure play better and win, but they got to get hot and capture some momentum inside the game and apply more pressure to force penalties and mistakes in the final analysis.

Did anyone notice how bad the ice was last night? I mean they’re playing a game in Canada and the puck was bouncing all over the fucking place, which lead to bad passes, turnovers and was a major reason the powerplay was so unsuccessful (bigger reason is Kompon). It was aboslutely pathetic and reminded me of the game against the Jets that also ended 1-0.

I sure as hope the Flames ice is better than last nights!

My problem with Sutter is he uses his 4th line too much at the end of the game when we are trailing. Our 4th line has done a really good job lately, but lets face it they’re not going to score those critical goals that get us back in or even a game up! Sutter needs to get is top guys in more of a flow in the 3rd when we’re trailing. From there it is up to our top guys being our top guys and burying the chances they get.

Mike Richards is fucking Killing me! I really think it is time to move King off that line and put a Richardson or Lewis up with them so they can recover pucks in the O-zone. It is too many one and dones with that line, and not enough sustain pressure.